For some places, sure, but let me reassure all the average programmers in Des Moines or Tulsa or Kansas City: don't feel bad about yourself. It really is true that most of you are making $70k a year. And you have a house and a comfortable life, unlike the guys in New York and the Valley telling you that that's low.
the GP is Eliezer Yudkowsky http://yudkowsky.net/, he works at a nonprofit. Also author of the excellent "Harry Potter and the methods of rationality". So your remark makes no sense.
Also those Salary figures are low. The lowest I've seen for a junior engineer who can't negotiate in NYC or SF is 70-90k.
Its very very normal for a smart junior engineer with track record to get 110k even at relatively small orgs, I've seen this or higher in NYC or SF. (notice the emphasis on really smart)
really really good (and senior) engineers at organizations that have money / are somewhat large, are known to easily hit salaries of 300k-400k. I've heard of higher, but I'm just naming the range i've heard from people directly.
> really really good (and senior) engineers at organizations that have money / are somewhat large, are known to easily hit salaries of 300k-400k.
That's really high. I work in NYC and know of a small set who're hitting 175k-180k max (not me, I make less!), and those people are a rare bunch. I realize there are people who may be getting up to 300k, but that's probably the top 0.5%-1% percentile.
I've heard these urban legends of 200k+ in SF and NYC - are there people here on HN who make that much, even in SF or NYC?
110k-150k seems to be a realistic range for a pretty good software engineer in NYC.
I agree, 110-150k is the normal good range.
The folks I know who are above that range are some of the best engineers I have the pleasure of knowing on the planet.
When I say really really good, think "epic, world class level threat" amazing. :)
Agreed. :) But IMHO, that puts them in the top 0.1% of engineers, and isn't reflective of the "middle class" or vast majority of programmers, even in SF or NYC. ;)
That's disappointing for me in a way. I'm offshoring for NY companies, and it's been pretty hard to reach those figures, even considering myself a reasonably competent developer. Is the cost of life that high in those areas or are those people making really good money?
Heres how I think about salaries: They have nothing to do with cost of living, but of value created/negotiated.
Also compensation can be dramatically influenced by the nature of the dev work and skills needed. Eg: are you doing the architecting for your work, how quickly could you onboard someone else to do the work instead, how broad and deep the needed expertise are, etc
Many tech operations "outsource" because they can't find good people who they are able to hire. This could be for one of several reasons! 1) they just cant find people locally 2) they dont have money 3) they cant find people locally and they dont have money.
without knowing more about what youre doing, its hard to answer informatively.
Yeah, seems low. Avg software eng in the bay area last year was $125k (according to 7x7). I make that as a jr rails dev with about 2 (real) yrs experience, though I've been doing front-end (seriously) and rails (leisurely) for about 6 years.
